Nepali Christians join a Church service in Lapa village of Dadhing, about 100 kilometers northwest of Kathmandu, in this file image. (AFP)
Christian leaders in Nepal have expressed dismay after a court ordered four Christians to face trial for allegedly engaging in forced religious conversion in a district bordering India.
The district court in Bara in Eastern Nepal on April 3 asked the Christians to furnish a personal bond of 150,000 Nepali rupees (US$1,130) each for bail.
The Christians were detained last month and spent 24 days in police custody after they were accused of proselytizing and carrying Bibles and other religious documents.
“This is an outrageous case of injustice against all Christians," said B.P. Khanal, an educationist, author and inter-faith coordinator of Nepal Christian Society (NCS), an ecumenical Christian forum.
He said it was "a real big setback" that was influenced by the "intensifying anti-Christian bias among the public and government bodies.”
The four Christians reportedly visited a non-Christian family. A group of locals confronted them in that house in Kolhabi municipality on March 10.
Meanwhile, seven Australian Christians were taking a walk on the street following a Christian gathering in the Hindu-majority town.
The locals called the police, asking for the detention of all Christians for allegedly attempting to forcefully convert the locals.
The Australians were deported to their country while the four Nepali Christians were detained for further investigations.
“The police heard the crowd’s voice and didn’t want to hear our side of the story,” one of the detained Christians said, according to Khanal.
Persecution of Christians in the Hindu-majority Himalayan nation is common despite Nepal adopting a secular constitution in 2015.
The Constitution guarantees religious and cultural freedom but criminalizes religious conversion.
Nepal revised the Penal Code in 2017 making forced conversion a crime, punishable with five years jail term and 50,000 rupees fine.
It also stipulates the deportation of foreigners found guilty of encouraging or promoting religious conversions within a week.
“The increasing cases in the name of religious conversion is worrisome,” said Tanka Subedi, a pastor with the Family of God Church.
More than 20 cases of persecution of Christians and attacks on Churches have been reported since 2018, when the revised Penal code came into force, according to the Nepal Christian Society.
The actual number should be much higher, the group says.
Khanal said Christians are treated like criminals and arrested for practicing their right to religious freedom. "Most of them come from poor economic backgrounds and cannot pay for bail or fine,” he said.
Subedi said discrimination and violence against Christians have intensified with the radicalization of Hinduism and increasing religious nationalism promoted by major political parties.
Catholic Father Lalit Tudu, parish priest of Assumption Cathedral in the capital Kathmandu, said: “No one should hurt the sentiments of other religions and respect each other's beliefs and practices to maintain social and religious tolerance."
More than 80 percent of Nepal’s estimated 31 million population are Hindus, according to official data. Christians account for about two percent.
